continence services

[hazeyjane]

Ds is due to see continence services shortly, after I phoned the health visitor in order to enquire about free nappies.

The form we have to fill in is really difficult to comprehend, especially the part about wees, questions of amounts of wee produced etc - something whihc is difficult to ascertain, when they are in nappies!

Has anyone else had one of these forms to fill out - it is huge!

Also does anyone know if the child has to actually be present, or is it possible to take along physio reports about the physical reasons?

I think you have to weigh the nappies to determine how much wee.

not filled out a form though. just had to measure volume. which was easy enough, apart from the time it was in the carpet...

Ah, ok that makes sense.

The form is so detailed, every poo, nappy change, amount of poo consistency etc, then wees, plus exact amounts of fluids.

Dh and I spent the evening trying to work out which poo on the Bristol stool scale, ds's poo resembled....

To find out how much wee, fill a jug up with water and test how much one nappy holds, then times the amount of water by the amount you change your DS.

Oh goodness our form wasn't like that you poor thing ! We just had to
Write dd was in nappies , she didn't have to go to any visits a man
Just appeared one day and delivered them, be warned the boxes are huge

Our form was exactly like that. It took 5 visits from the health visitor to fill in with me. I had to use nappy liners in her nappies and check her/change it every hour so I could record exactly when she had a wee over a number of days... And yes the Bristol stool chart thing was ridiculous - when it is squashed in a nappy how do you know what it originally looked like?! So I just guessed/made it up...

So yes, I feel your pain! My DD has severe/profound learning difficulties and has no bladder/bowel awareness at all - the form just isn't set up for this but you do just have to plough through it!!

Nappy box

The forms

Oh darn, mummymoo, I had convinced myself that we had the wrong forms and the HV had made a cock up!

Oh well, I will pull on my marigolds and start weighing poo, and pouring wee into beakers.

It is bloody ridiculous, his paed and gp both state the reason for his need for nappies (mainly his low muscle tone).

Jason, your post makes my brain hurt! I will include the 'jug method' in my experiments today though.

I hope you have somewhere ready to store 200 + nappies.

Jason, your post makes my brain hurt! I will include the 'jug method' in my experiments today though.

The average nappy can hold 210 ml of liquid, roughly what a 4 year old 's bladder can hold (so one wee).

so if you change 4 wet nappies a day it would be 840 Ml a day.

All you have to do is fill a nappy up until it looks roughly as full as when you would change it, then times the amount of water you put in by how often you change him.

Thankyou Jason, that is so helpful (the bit about amounts of fluid, rather than the 200 nappies bit)

wonders about building nappy-henge

If you don't already have cavity wall insulation... i bet you could suff a fair few behind light switches.

Mine used the packets as stepping
Stones

Jason and BlackeyedSusan - can I just thankyou both.

I spent a chunk of the day soaking nappies and weighing them, so when I take off ds's nappy I weigh it and know how much fluid is in there - this was a lot more fun than I thought it would be

You are more than welcome, it's something that seems impossible unless you've done it.

Goodness. We didnt do anything like that. Just had to tell the HV how many nappies we used a day. DS had constant diarrhoea, the official allocation was less than half what we used!!

It seems it really varies from area to area.

Trouble we are having now is playing 'match the poo' with the Bristol stool scale - ds's doesn't look like any of them!

Hazey the best thing to do is ignore the pictures and the description.
1 is rock hard pellets, 7 is water and the rest are in between. My guess is his will be 2, 3 or 4 depending on how firm it is.